


Dramione One-Shots Under 500 Words

by Colubrina



Series: Dramione One Shots [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Shorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2020-11-07 13:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 7,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20817833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: A collection of dramione one-shots, all shorter than 500 words.





	1. Stranded on Christmas Eve

Hermione bit her lip and tried not to be upset, but she had planned Christmas down to the last detail. They were going to Paris. She’d booked a hotel room. She’d spent a fortune - a small fortune, but a fortune nevertheless - on lingerie. And now they were stuck. In Blaise Zabini’s hunting cabin of all places. He didn’t even hunt! No one hunted! It should be called a drinking cabin because based on what she’d found under the sink, he did a lot of drinking here.

“I’m sorry,” she said. The snow kept falling, and the radio continued to announce a travel ban, and if she found the Dark Wizard who had the Ministry in a tizzy, she was going to kill him with her bare hands. Dark wizard! Hah. Slightly light grey wizard, more likely. Everyone still overreacted after Voldemort.

“For what?” Draco asked. “You didn’t send a threat to the under-minister for portkey reservations, resulting in this... shelter in place nonsense.”

“But,” she said, thinking of all the handmade lace she’d bought. Handmade lace attached to very small scraps of satin.

“We’re in a cabin, in the woods, and there’s only one bed,” Draco said. He pulled out a bottle and eyed the label. “And 18-year small-batch firewhiskey.”

Hermione pushed her tongue into the corner of her mouth. When he put it that way... and there was always Valentine’s Day. She could wear the lingerie then...


	2. A Negative Charge

In hindsight throwing her drink in his face probably wasn’t the best idea. Still, as she stalked along the poorly lit path that bordered this overgrown excuse for a park, Hermione admitted it had probably been inevitable. She and Ron had always been volatile. She cursed him. He blamed her. They fought loudly and cruelly and often. They were too alike. Both too Gryffindor when it came down to it. Like two positive magnets, they ended up pushing one another away. She couldn’t do it anymore.

What she needed was someone with a negative charge. She needed her opposite.

She rounded a tree that needed trimming and ran straight into a wizard tipping a bottle back into his mouth. “God,” he said, “watch where you’re going.”

She recognized the voice. Even in the near-darkness, those posh vowels gave Draco Malfoy away. 

Her mouth twisted as she looked at him. It was hard to make him out, so she cast a lumos. He glared at her. His white-blond hair was as pale as ever, his cheekbones as slanted, his eyes as grey. But the arrogance had been replaced by something more brittle. She knew war veterans, and unless she was much mistaken, Draco Malfoy had had a rough time of it

“Malfoy,” she said.

“Granger.” 

It wasn’t the most welcoming version of her name she’d ever heard but, honestly, she didn’t care. She put her hands on her hips, cocked her head to the side, and asked, “Wanna fuck?”


	3. Ghost

“Why won’t you leave?” Hermione asked. She closed her eyes and tried to will him away. It didn’t work. It never did. When she dared to look agai,n Draco Malfoy still sat on her chair, almost not translucent. He still wore black, which hid the stains. In dim light, you couldn’t even tell he was a ghost.

Well, if you could see him, you couldn’t tell. She was the only one who did. He would stand behind her and whisper in her ear and no one else saw him. No one else heard him. She was being haunted to madness and, by the glint in his eyes, he was enjoying it.

“Just go,” she said. It was a plea.

When he smiled, his mouth was full of blood. “I like it when you beg,” he said softly. “Do it again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to lacoleywrites for the prompt


	4. Nom de Guerre

Hermione had her arms crossed and that set look to her mouth that meant she was about to argue. 

Draco pushed his tongue against the back of his teeth and tried not to look too interested - or too amused. - Really, though, visiting professors should know better than to go spouting off their pet theories about Voldemort to Potter’s best friend. This one, one in a long line of Ministry-approved guest lecturers, here to help turn the school back from a Death Eater training ground to an actual school, had made the mistake of suggesting the man had been influenced by French philosophers, and that was the basis for his pretentious nom de guerre.

She actually said _nom de guerre_ and that was when Hermione opened her mouth.

“You haven’t the faintest clue, do you?” she asked.

The professor looked offended. They always did when Hermione gave up and told them off. She pulled herself up as if by finding another inch in her spine she’d be able to out-argue her student. She wouldn’t, but Draco rather admired the effort. 

“Malfoy,” Hermione said, appealing to him. “Back me up here.”

He glanced at his former enemy and current girlfriend. War might make for strange bedfellows but peace, he was finding, made for stranger still. And more pleasant. “Her French accent is so bad, I can’t be quite sure what she was trying to say.” He raised his brows in what he hoped was a look of both confusion and disdain. Hermione had informed him the expression made him look supercilious, and - after he’d looked the word up - he’d decided to use it more often. “Perhaps she could stick to English if she’s not properly bilingual.”

The amused glint in Hermione’s eyes told him their after-dinner snogging would be especially pleasant today. Assuming he didn’t manage to piss her off between now and then. He turned back to the lecturer and raised his brows again. “You were saying?” he asked with false politeness. If he played his cards right, maybe Hermione would be interested in more than a kiss or two. It was worth trying. “About Voldemort’s gnomes?”


	5. A Wedding Dance

She wanted to dance with the one person who would make him burn inside. She could feel the tears trying to push their way out, could feel her hands shaking, but she would be damned if she would give Ron the satisfaction of seeing her react to his drunken taunt.

She would make him hurt as much as he was making her burn with rage and humiliation.

She stood up and plucked her purse from the chair. A few murmured words to Molly as she passed. It’s a lovely wedding, Ginny looks beautiful, Harry is so happy. She said all the right things because, unlike some people, she knew how not to cause a scene. 

She also knew how to cause one.

A tap on his shoulder, a smile. Draco Malfoy didn’t even look surprised but, then, he’d kept himself collected even during what had to have been hell that final year of the war. Being approached by an old schoolmate at a social event wasn’t the sort of thing to ruffle his calm.

“Would you like to dance,” she asked.

He didn’t even flick a glance over at the table where Ron still sat. “I’d love to,” he said. “Who wouldn’t want to dance with the most beautiful woman here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to sebtrashcan-stan for the prompt


	6. Forgiveness

Introducing yourself to someone you already knew was decidedly awkward. It was worse if you’d been a bit of a prat to them in school. More than a bit of a prat, if he was being honest. Draco ran a hand through his hair and tried to recall if he’d ever said a single nice thing to the woman. Probably not. Between his parents harping on how awful Muggle-borns were and his own insecurities - even at eleven he’d been intimidated by her brain - he’d been truly awful.

He could do this. He had apologized to Alicia Spinnet. He had wept on Vincent’s grave. He could say hello to one woman. What was the worst that could happen? She’d turn away and refuse to talk to him?

She’d scream ‘Death Eater’ and point at him, and he’d be thrown out?

She’d curse him? He wouldn’t put it past her. He wouldn’t even blame her.

He took a deep breath and walked across the room. It was why he’d come. He had to try at least to do… something. Cowardice almost pushed him back out the door and into the safety of solitude when she turned and spotted him. That white hair meant he could never hide in a crowd. He braced himself, but her face opened into an almost welcoming look. She raised a hand and waved him over and, hardly daring to believe it, he followed that near order.

“This is who I was telling you about,” she said to the couple she’d been talking to. “Draco Malfoy. One of the bravest men I know. What he survived that year… I can’t even imagine.”

Draco grabbed a drink from a passing caterer. “Hermione Granger,” he said. His throat nearly strangled the words. “How nice to see you again.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to whatidiotsignedmeupforadulthood for the prompt.


	7. Memories

He squeezed the vial of memories tightly in his hand before letting Hermione take them.His future.His life.And it all came down to whether she believed him. Well, whether the Order in general believed him, he supposed, but Draco was no fool.If Hermione Granger decided the memories he’d brought were enough, they’d take him in.Hide him.Get him out of hell.

The room she’d left him in was small.He knew the doors were locked.Probably charmed closed since they hadn’t taken his wand.The window didn’t open.There was one chair and it was hard.He sat in it, then got up and paced, then stared out into the snow.This safe house was in a location that started at bleak and kept going.The room didn’t have enough heat.Grime had collected in the corners. 

He’d give anything to stay here.

Had, he supposed.

What he didn’t know was whether it was what they wanted.Meetings he’d sat in on, shaking.Curses he’d cast. Curses he’d endured. He’d tried to give it all to them. 

God, this room was cold.

He sat again and hung his head.He could see the lines in the wooden floor.A watermark where something had spilled long ago. The door opened and he jumped up. “Well?” he asked.His voice stayed steady, which was good.It was bad to let people see fear.Lessons learned at home and applied here.

Her face was pale.“I’m so sorry,” she said, and for a moment he thought she meant they were going to turn him away.His heart lurched and the edges of his vision went white. “I had no idea -- we had no idea,” she went on, and she was stepping into the room and holding him and Draco shook in her arms as he realized she meant he could stay.That she meant he was safe.“If I’d known, we would have gotten you out,” she was saying, and then more things. Things about a Healer and food and was he okay with sleeping alone or did he prefer a roommate, and none of that mattered because it was enough.

It was enough.


	8. A Toast

_No matter where you are, or what you doing, or who you are with, I will always love you. _It was what he said every year. He’d come to the same restaurant where they’d gone that last time, order the same bottle of champagne, and raise his glass to her empty seat. _I don’t think it will be like that_, Hermione had said. _This isn’t exactly going to be a pleasure cruise. _

_Terminal_, the healer had said, and _I’m so sorry_.

“I will always love you,” Draco whispered again. 

He drank alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from themuffetstuff's prompt on tumblr


	9. Mum

“Ms. Hermione, are you my mum?”

Hermione squatted down and brushed some of Scorpius’ hair out of his eyes. They were grey – the spitting image of his father’s – but the sad, hopeful smile was all Astoria. _Make this better_, that smile begged. _If you’re my real mum, then my mum isn’t dead._

“No,” she said. His face twisted into the pain he didn’t want to show, and she took both his hands and held them as tightly as she could. “I loved your mum. She was so kind – so much kinder than I am.”

Draco’s snort above them was a little too expressive. She didn’t need him agreeing she’d never measure up to his dead wife, no matter what she said to Scorpius. 

“But you can be my mum now,” Scorpius said.

“If you want,” Hermione said. “I can try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promoted by franklyneptune on tumblr


	10. Fish and Chips

“I don’t care, I want some fish and chips.” 

The words were petulant and whiny and absolutely infuriating. Hermione didn’t like that this had become her problem. _Harry_ was the one who had de-aged Malfoy. _Harry _was the one who had turned a difficult, scheming seventeen-year-old into an equally difficult seven-year-old. Harry, who was theoretically off trying to find someone to fix this, leaving her along with Malfoy.

Where did children not belong? On the _bloody run from the Death Eaters. _And if they got caught, was anyone likely to believe the pointy-faced, foot-stomping child she had by the wrist was really the scion of a pureblood house? No.

“Look,” she said for what felt like the three-hundredth time. “We are in hiding. We can’t just pop over to Diagon Alley for lunch.”

Predictably, Draco Malfoy burst into tears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by selenelinh-blackburn on tumblr


	11. Civility

Sometimes beating up a guy, taking a picture of his, and turning it into artwork was a valid choice. Hermione had spent far too much of her youth facing down monsters who wore human faces to have walked into adulthood a pacifist. But, as she wandered through the gallery, she was hard-pressed to think this was one of those times. She reached out towards the swollen, bloody face of Draco Malfoy in one of the pictures before she remembered not to touch and dropped her hand back to her side. 

“Do you like it?” Ron asked. He had a smirk on his face, and one of the artist’s mission statements clutched in his fist.

“Not really,” Hermione said. _Civility_ was the title of the exhibition. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Not this, certainly. Maybe if Malfoy had been here, smirking and obviously okay, she would have been able to see these in another light. As it was, all she could see was a group of people far too pleased with themselves for admiring violence. 

“He was a Death Eater,” Ron said. “Rotten git.” He took a long swallow from a glass of cheap champagne and grinned. “What is it you’re always saying about actions have consequences?”

“Mmm.” Hermione set her own glass of champagne down. Her heels made a pleasant clacking sound on the stone floor. They sounded decisive. They sounded powerful.

Ron hurried after her. “Where are you going? We just got here. I thought you were happy I was taking you out to something like this.”

“I just realized I need to check up on something,” Hermione said. _Someone_ she meant. The door closed on Ron as she pulled her wand and apparated away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by rowanofferelden on tumblr


	12. The Death of Him

He knew a Gryffindor would be the death of him, he just hadn’t expected it to be her. Potter, sure. One of the violent Weasley twins, absolutely. But when Draco Malfoy stood in the shadow of the trees outside the Order safehouse and looked down the long line of a wand, it was Hermione Granger on the other end. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, trying to force the cocky smirk that had come so easily at twelve, at fourteen, at any point in his life before he’d learned what fear was. Before he’d learned how much a person could hurt. The grin didn’t come, though, and his words came out in with more a quiver than he’ would have liked. “Come to these woods often.”

“Often enough,” she said. “What do you want, Malfoy?”

“Help,” he said. He swallowed hard. “Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by jayciethings on tumblr


	13. Chapter 13

“Why are you looking at the wrong places? Look at me, I’m just right here.”

Hermione pulled her head out from under the bed to glare at Draco. He was sitting in one of the armchairs his mother had insisted on giving them. His legs were outstretched. His shoes gleamed. “Yes,” she said in a voice she hoped didn’t sound like she wanted to throttle that smirk right off his face. “You are here. But my shoes are not here.”

“Accio them,” he said.

Hermione cast a pointed glare at the pile of tangled shoes behind her. As if she hadn’t already thought of that. She’d managed to summon every pair of shoes in the house _except_ the ones she wanted. She’d probably yanked a few away from the neighboring flats. “Gosh,” she said. “What a great idea.”

Draco laughed, and she leveled her wand at him. “I _ could_ transfigure you to a pair of gold heels,” she said. “Just for this New Year’s party. Then I’d put you back.”

He laughed again, and this time he stood up and wrapped his arms around her. “We could always stay home,” he said. “If the right shoes are that important.”

Hermione was about to snap at him that no, they could _not_ stay home. This was the biggest party of the year, and they absolutely had to be there. Then she inhaled, and breathed in the scent of his cologne and weighed her options. Party. Bad wine. Too loud. People who she needed to impress while wearing painful shoes. Home. Good wine. Soft bed. Someone who could take his time trying to impress her.

Really, it was no contest. They didn’t call her the brightest witch of her age for nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from a prompt by themuffetstuff on tumblr


	14. Re-Education

“I never thought I would see you here,” Draco said. Hermione stiffened and he knew he’d managed to insult her somehow. He hadn’t meant it badly. If anything, the exact opposite. These ‘educational workshops’ were for people like him. Criminals. Death Eaters. The children of Death Eaters. They were a required part of what the Ministry called their ‘reintegration into society.’ 

They could reintegrate his arse as far as he was concerned. He’d like to see one of the sour-faced bureaucrats who set these up survive a year with Voldemort in their home. He’d come out sane and not having murdered anyone, and that was about as much as a person could hope for.

“I was invited to speak,” she said stiffly.

Well, that was just _extra_ wonderful.

Hermione fumbled with one of the cups of institutional tea the Ministry provided, the notes she was clutching getting in her way. Draco reached out his hand to stop her. Even if she was here to lecture him on morality, he couldn’t let her drink that. “Don't’,” he said. “It tastes like they brewed it out of dust and dead moths.”

“That’s, uh, a vivid image,” Hermione said.

In for a knut, in for a galleon. “I could buy you a cup after,” he said. Or a pint, which is what he usually wanted after these things.

“If you make that a firewhiskey, I’d be interested,” she muttered. She was scanning the room and her knuckles were white. It couldn’t be fun speaking to a group of people more likely to resent her than listen. Gregory Goyle was openly scowling at her, and some of the older hangers-on who hadn’t been sentenced to Azkaban sat with arms crossed and set expressions on their thuggish faces.

God, he hated being stuck in a room with these people.

“Keep it under thirty minutes and you’ve got a deal,” Draco said. 

He was kidding --mostly-- but when she gave him a small, tight smile and said, “You’re on,” some part of the weight that had been sitting on his chest since the war lifted. This night could be good. Could be _brilliant_.

“I’ll see you when it’s over,” he said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from a prompt by jordan-hennessy on tumblr


	15. The Tables Turned

Blaise reached up into the cabinet to pull down the jar of flobberworms, his eyes on the book in front of him. He needed four pickled worms, a half cup of lavender, plus sea salt and powdered wormswood. The rest he had in his own kit, but in theory the school supplied fresh ingredients.

His fingers brushed against someone else’s and he looked over with a frown that became more pronounced when he saw who it was. Granger. Draco Malfoy’s odd little obsession, not that Blaise understood why. She never took any care of her appearance. Her hair was tied back in a puffy _thing_ that she might have thought was a braid and he’d bet good money her nails had never seen a manicurist. And she was a nobody. A nothing. A _muggle-born_ to use the polite term, not that anyone did in Slytherin. Not that _Draco_ did.

“Problem, Zabini?” she asked in a cool voice.

He leaned closer so his lips were at her ears and breathed out, “You don’t really think fucking him is going to get you a wedding ring, do you?”

Her lips tightened for just a moment before she pulled down the jar, set it on the counter, and stepped closer to him, her hair and hips in his space, her own mouth tipped up toward him. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips and Blaise - Blaise who’d had any number of girls and who had been sure he knew all there was to know about things carnal - suddenly realized he knew nothing. He’d never _wanted_ before. Never burned for someone he couldn’t have. His cock sprang to attention, and his heart began to race. And she _knew, _damn her. She was so close to him, her body right at his, there was no way she didn’t know the effect she was having on him. 

He swallowed once, and then again, and her eyes fell to the bob in his throat. And she smiled, and he knew what it was to be seen and discarded as not interesting enough. He’d given a dozen girls that look but it had never been directed at him.

How dare she not want him.

“Be a dear,” she said and her voice had gone from cool to husky. Blaise knew he’d wank off to that tone later, imagining it was for him. Imagining those moistened lips were on him and not that blond-haired, miserable, stuck-up sot. “Tell Draco I’m busy tonight.”

She counted out the worms as he watched in silence, unable to come up with a clever retort, then left him to walk back to her table. She put her head next to Ron Weasley’s, and the man let out a grating laugh and glanced back at Blaise. 

He was going to get her. He was going to make that woman want him if it took him all year.

He counted out the worms and stomped back to his own work table.

“Problem, Zabini?” Malfoy asked.

“Sod off,” he said, and began chopping. “Sod right the fuck off.”


	16. You Want Whom?

“You want whom?” Narcissa Malfoy asked her son, lifting her head from the book she’d been idly reading.

“You heard me,” Draco said. He was lounging against the doorway of the library and had been watching his mother ignore his presence for almost twenty minutes. The Dark Lord had decided he needed a wife, go find one, and given the man’s penchant for feeding people who displeased him to his snake Draco was feeling motivated to comply.

Well, mostly comply.

“She’s not appropriate,” Narcissa said. “Find someone else.”

“She’s single,” Draco pointed out, “and powerful, and I have it on good authority she’d look favorably upon my suit.”

He managed to keep a straight face when uttering the phrase ‘good authority’ which would probably amuse the authority in question who, last time he’d checked, was lounging on his bed surrounded by a pile of books and arguing with a house-elf about her hair. Mippy had opinions about hair and secret subscriptions to several Muggle hair-stylist trade magazines. She and Hermione had put their wills against one another the moment he’d had the witch move in and so far neither had budged. His money was on Mippy.

Theo had told him he was going to lose that bet but he’d disregarded the man’s opinion. Anyone who’d married Luna Lovegood had to be a little daft himself.

“She’s a Mudblood,” Narcissa said, “and there is no girl in all of Britain who would turn you down. You’re a Malfoy_ and_ a Death Eater. A prince and an elite member of the Dark Lord’s forces. Find someone more suited to your rank and station, my sweetling.”

“I think no,” Draco said. “I’ve decided I want this one and, mum, you know how I get when I decide I want something.” He smiled at her. “Do you remember the broom incident when I was eight?”

Narcissa smiled. “I had hoped you had somewhat grown up since then,” she said, “despite all evidence to the contrary.”

She marked the page of her book and, after closing the volume and setting it down, stood up. “Why this one?” she asked. “It will cause you no end of grief battling the prejudice within the ranks. Why not pick someone easier?”

Draco loped toward his mother and, taking her hand, brought her fingers to his lips. “Because I happen to love this one,” he said. “And I prefer to surround myself with things – and people - that I love.”

“Well,” Narcissa said. “You hadn’t mentioned that.”

“It needed saying?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “You thought, after seeing the example of how you and father adore each other, I’d ever settle for less?”

Narcissa looped her arm through his and let him lead her out the side doors to the garden. “Will it be a summer wedding, then?” she asked. “If you can wait for winter, son, that snake won’t be able to attend.”

“Winter,” Draco said. “Weddings take so long to plan, after all.”

“Indeed,” Narcissa said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written as a birthday present for dramione101


	17. Sleeping Beauty

**For just because u said so**

. . . . . . . . . .

**1.**

She should have known better than to trust him. That was the main thing, she thought. That she’d made a fool of herself over a pair of grey eyes and a crooked smile and the pervasive, alluring lie that she was different than the others was secondary to that. If she’d never trusted him she wouldn’t be here now.

**2.**

“You thought I cared about you, princess?” He’d felt his chest clench as he’d said the words, as he’d watched her face go from disbelief to fear to the shuttered, cold indifference he’d worked so hard to open. 

She fled to the cottage where they’d spent so many afternoons, where they’d pretended time didn’t matter, to get away from his words. She had the door shut before she felt the trap close around her. Tricked, she wanted to scream. All lies, all a trick to get her here. She turned and pounded on the wood but she was stuck. Nothing would open. Magic was wrapping her like a child in a blanket and she made it to the bed – to their bed – before she couldn’t fight the spells anymore and fell into a sleep like death.

**4.**

He stood outside the cottage and coaxed the roses to grow. By the time he was done the thicket obscured the building and he let himself cry. “I’ll be back,” he promised. “When this madness is over, when it’s safe for you, I’ll be back. Even if you hate me when you wake, hate me and live.”

**5.**

She dreamed. She saw him, roses painted on a leering mask. “I like them, Lestrange,” he snapped. “What’s it to you?” She saw him kill and hunt and destroy and stand every year weeping at a thicket she didn’t know. She saw him never age and knew he’d done something terrible. “It’s not ending,” he said at that thicket. “I had to do it so I could come and get you. Someday, my briar rose, some day.” He buried his pale face in blood soaked hands. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I can’t even forgive myself anymore.”

**6.**

He picked them off, one by one. Unfortunate accidents. Debauchery gone wrong. He picked and picked at picked at the circle until it was gone and he picked and picked and picked at the man’s soul until it was destroyed and then he killed the monster.

“99 years,” he said, looking down at the pale, deformed body as it bled out into the dirt. “How poetic.”

**7.**

It took him a year to face her. He locked himself into a world of his own and repented, a word that sounds innocuous and that meant blood and screaming and pain and when he was done, when he learned exactly how much it hurt to sew your soul back together, he released the charms on the roses and the cottage and sat and waited for her to wake.

**8.**

“I think,” she said, “you’re supposed to kiss me to break the spell.”

**9.**

“I didn’t want to presume I was your true love anymore,” he whispered. “I’m not worth loving anymore.”

**10.**

So she kissed him.


	18. Tristan

Draco looked at her, his eyes revealing nothing. “I’ve been ordered to bring you to him,” he said.

“The peace treaty,” she muttered. “And I’m the game piece that gets slid across the board.”

“It’s the way of the world,” Draco said, waiting for her to get her things together. “Bring a house-elf. You’ll want one.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“It won’t be so bad,” Molly promised. At Hermione’s incredulous look the woman said, “I brewed a love potion. It’s illegal, of course, but I put it in wine; serve it at the wedding and it will guarantee that he’ll adore you, that he’ll treat you well.”

“It will drug me too,” Hermione pointed out.

“That will make it easier,” Molly said softly. “It will make you not care.”

. . . . . . . . . .

The trip back was long. For reasons unknown the Dark Lord had decreed they had to travel by slow – very slow – boat. Draco and Hermione passed the time playing chess and sweating in the hot sun on the deck. When the house-elf brought them both some chilled wine, they drank it gratefully, without asking whence it came.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco began to watch her, fascination in his eyes. She began to watch him, longing in hers.

. . . . . . . . . .

The wedding was flawless. Hermione smiled at the Dark Lord, put her dainty hand in his, vowed fidelity and honor and many, many things. Draco stood to his Lord’s side, the servant trusted in all things.

. . . . . . . . . .

She went to his bed the first time that night. Hands and tongues and bodies and hearts winding about one another, they undid her vows before the sun had even risen on her marriage. “I cannot bear the thought of you with him,” Draco groaned into her neck.

“It’s the way of the world,” she replied.

. . . . . . . . . .

“She’s betrayed you,” the advisors would say, again and again, and the Dark Lord would eye his beautiful bride and question her. Again and again she raised her pretty eyebrows and used wit and boldness to escape and evade his questions. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps the whole thing amused him. Perhaps he simply didn’t care.

And she’d go back to Draco’s bed.

. . . . . . . . . .

In the end it was Draco’s uncle Lestrage who entrapped them. Lestrange who forced the Dark Lord’s hand.

They both died, of course. That’s the way tragic love stories end. They end with death and despair and loneliness, not with cottages filled with fat babies.

That’s why you aren’t supposed to drink love potions.

They never make anything easier.

. . . . . . . . . .

The honeysuckle and hazel grew from their graves, wrapped around one another so tightly they couldn’t be separated.

The Dark Lord ordered them cut down.

They grew back.

Eventually, he stopped trying, defeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A birthday present for MissMoony13


	19. Which House?

“He’ll be in Slytherin,” Draco said. He hadn’t even looked up from the book he was reading. “I’m not sure why you’re waiting for the owl with such eagerness.”

“Scorpius,” Hermione said, with a snort. “You think _Scorpius_ is going to be in Slytherin? This is the boy who quite _literally_ tilted at a windmill in the garden when he was four. He jumped out of his tree house when he was seven. He started trying to free his grandmother’s house elves at nine.”

“I blame that on you,” Draco said. He still hadn’t looked up.

“He’s a Gryffindor,” she said. “I just know it. What else could he possibly be?”

“Hermione,” Draco said, “his _name_ means scorpion. He belongs with the snakes. And, besides, he’s a Malfoy. We’re always in Slytherin. _Always_.”

She huffed. “Grangers are always in Gryffindor.”

“A sample size of one is statistically insignificant,” Draco said.

“Prat,” she muttered, and looked out the window again. “Where _is_ that owl? Harry already knows where his kid is.”

“Albus Severus,” Draco said with a snort. “Subtle he wasn’t.”

“Could have been worse,” she said.

“How?” Draco asked, oblivious the irony of a man who’d insisted on naming his son ‘Scorpius’ having derogatory opinions of other people’s name choices.

“Ginny was advocating for ‘Abelforth’.”

“The goat guy?” Draco made a face.

“Exactly.” Hermione seemed to spot something because she opened the window and then rummaged about in a drawer for owl treats. The approaching owl swooped in and settled on a stand and held its leg out with what looked like annoyance. Hermione untied the note, handed the owl a treat and kissed it between the ears before it took off again.

“You really shouldn’t put your mouth on birds,” Draco said. “I’m quite sure that’s unsanitary.”

It was an old argument and she rolled her eyes. 

“I tell you,” Draco said as she began unrolling the parchment. “It’ll be Slytherin.”

“Gryffindor,” she said, lowering the note she’d yet to read.

“Slytherin,” he repeated.

“Gryffindor.”

“Honestly,” Cassiopeia said as she plucked the note from her mother’s hands. “It’s so obvious where he’ll be.” She named a house before she looked, unrolled the parchment, repeated the same name she’d just said, adding, “Told you so.”

Draco and Hermione both laughed at how smug the little girl sounded.

“That you did, pet,” Draco said. “That you did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A birthday gift for SusanMarieS


	20. Snowball Fight

He felt the snowball hit him in the back and he spun around to see who’d had the bloody nerve to attack him. There were a couple of first and second years, building some kind of lopsided snowman, but other than them the only other person out was Granger, who had her head down over a book. He rolled his eyes. Only Hermione Granger, swot extraordinaire, would read outside on a snowy day.

Draco Malfoy turned away from her and, almost immediately, felt another snowball hit him, this time on the bum.

He turned around again and the little witch was still bent over her book but he thought he could see a smile tweaking at the corners of her mouth and, oh yes, the snow down at her feet had been disturbed. Scooped up to make snowballs perhaps, he thought, eyeing her. 

This, he thought, was war.

He waylaid her in the corridor later as she came back in, the wholly deserted corridor. She stopped when she saw him, leaning up against the wall, obviously planning to block her way. “What do you want, Malfoy?”

“Revenge,” he raised his eyebrows and tossed the tightly packed snowball he had in one hand up in the air, then caught it. “You should be more careful, alone with me in a hall almost no one enters, especially after attacking me like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tossed her hair and glanced up and down, confirming no one was around, that she was, indeed, totally on her own.

He smiled, a narrow, pointed smile that made her breath catch in her throat. “Wholly at my mercy, Granger. No one to rescue you. Whatever will you do?”

“What,” she asked, tipping her head to the side and considering him with a smile of her own, “are my options?”

“Well,” he drawled, “you could let me drop this snowball down the back of your shirt or you could kiss me.”

“You’ve stooped to blackmail now?” She walked towards him, hitching her bag up to her shoulder.

“Mmm,” he purred down at her as she approached, as leaned into him and turned her head up. “It’s as if you don’t even know me. I’ll stoop to whatever it takes to get what I want.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, her lips warm and soft; she parted them almost at once and, after weeks of not being able to so much as touch her, he groaned into her mouth and lost himself in tasting her, in feeling her against him again, even for a stolen moment. “This is going to kill me,” he whispered against her, pulling away for a moment.  
  


“Shh,” she pressed her mouth back into his and he nibbled along her bottom lip, and was just about to drop that damned snowball and pull her to him when she deftly tweaked it out of his fingers and slipped it down his own back.

“You little…” he watched her as she danced away from him, realizing she’d cut them off just in time because that group of first years was coming in. 

“I love you,” she mouthed at him.

“Love you, too,” he whispered, feeling the icy snow work its way down his back as she turned the corner and disappeared again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A birthday present for FaeBreeze!


	21. Youth Quidditch

"How did I end up with an athlete for a son," Hermione moaned, tracking Scorpius on the pitch with a practiced eye. She was wrapped in three blankets, had a warming spell running, and a cup of hot tea in her hands. Still, it was November and it was cold out. 

"Well, there's me," he began but her rude snort suggested she didn't actually credit their son's athleticism to his father, "and you did buy him a training broom at two. And signed him up for Pee Wee Quiddich at four, terrorizing the woman in charge of registration when she tried to insist children had to be at least five."

"And he dominated that team," Hermione's still watching the blond head as it flew back and forth across the pitch, scanning for the snitch. "That stupid woman should have let him play up."

"He was playing up."

“He was bored.”

Draco can’t actually argue with that; the kid had been the best player on the team by a noticeable margin and, of course, there had been the mooning incident. A bored Scorpius is a Scorpius in trouble. “And then you signed him up for quiddich camp all summer. Quiddich camp with kids three years older than he is.”

“He had fun,” Hermione grabbed his arm and he began to pay closer attention. Ah, Scorp had spotted the snitch and was trying to lead the other seeker away. 

“Don’t be too clever,” Draco muttered, watching the boy made a wild dive at the other end of the pitch, luring the other team into spasms of confused flailing even as he pulled up and flew, almost skimming the grass at a speed that surely that broom was not supposed to reach, towards the other end of the pitch. Draco looked over at Hermione who was watching her first-born fly far too quickly and hissed, “Did you take the speed restriction off that broom?”

“That would be cheating,” she said back in an undertone. “I may have left out the research showing that three rapid turns to the left in a row exploited a flaw in the design and would let you double the speed limit for approximately ten seconds. It’s hardly my fault if the child goes through things on my desk. I’ve asked him not to.”

“Merlin. You’re such a quiddich parent.”

“YES!” Hermione screeched as her child grabbed the snitch and settled down in front of the referee, an innocent, confused look in his eyes as she squinted at his remarkably speedy broom.

“If she passes that broom – “

“You still owe me a foot rub,” Hermione said smugly. “I told you he’d get the snitch in record time today. You didn’t say anything about broom flaws impacting the bet.”

“You devious little witch,” he said fondly, wrapping an arm around her as Scorpius’ team was declared the winner of the match. “One foot massage, coming your way.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday, unicornusmc


	22. There's Always Fire

Once upon a time there was a girl.

She was plain, rather bookish, and quite clever. She didn’t know what to do with her hair and was vaguely perplexed that other girls seemed to know how to do the fashion thing and she didn’t; she solved this problem by deciding fashion and feminine frippery were unimportant and anyone worth knowing would appreciate her for who she really was, not how she dressed.

Her cleverness didn’t really extend to understanding people but she was very good at books.

There was also a boy.

There’s always a boy, isn’t there?

He was rather attractive, though not nearly as much as he thought, and athletic, and he had no discernable problems with intellectual pursuits though, unlike the girl, he tended to downplay his academic skills in favor of his ability to catch a ball and come up with witty ways to put classmates down.

Boys always care so much about balls.

He noticed the clever girl with the bad hair. Well, it was impossible not to notice her with the way she sat in the front of every class and waved her hand at the teacher as though she were drowning but he noticed that, under her cleverness she was lonely and wished someone would actually see her.

He felt the same way and didn’t like this sense of kinship with an unpopular girl and responded by making as much fun of her as he could.

He wasn’t especially clever about people either but he was reasonably good at catching balls.

There was a war.

There isn’t always a war, though it can feel as if there were when you’re trapped in adolescence, but, in this case, it wasn’t a metaphorical war but an actual war with people dying and bleeding and hurting and it was awful in ways neither the boy nor the girl could have anticipated.

They were on opposite sides, of course.

The boy who understands you, even against his own will, is always on the other side. That’s just the way narrative works.

When the war was over the boy’s side had lost and he stood at the edge of the final battlefield, dirty and bleeding and singed because there had been fire.

There’s always fire.

The girl was singed too.

Always fire.

Always bleeding. Always loss. No one escapes their own story wholly unscathed, not even clever children who are good at games and books.

Sometimes, all you can hope for is that when you’re standing there, at the edge of the room, is that someone sees you for who you really are, not how you’re dressed. When you’re dressed in things that are stained and torn and covered in soot there’s not much pretense left.

She saw him.

“It will be okay,” she said as she took his hand and twined her own filthy fingers through his.

He squeezed her hand. 

They stood there.

The sun came up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday, AnnaOxford


	23. Mythos

**1.**

He wasn’t the lord of hell but he sometimes felt like he lived there in the manor filled with the souls of people long since damned. He certainly looked the part. Dark suits. Dark shoes. Pale, so pale, like he’d never seen the sun. 

**2**.

If she’d had a mother to weep for her, a queen or goddess to hold the earth hostage, maybe he would have had to let her go. But she didn’t. Not that she wanted to leave. She didn’t bother with excuses to satiate friends and parents. She simply came.

**3.**

They made up a story. He’d kidnapped her, he said. Brought her back against her will. The damned ones had laughed and thought it sport and she’d spit at them and he’d run a finger up her spine as the sun came in through the stained glass window and the light struck her, colouring her golden in the dim room.

**4.**

Wine? he offered. Did you make it out of pomegranate seeds, she asked, rolling her eyes and drinking the cup dry. If I did you’d be stuck now, he replied, watching her. She laughed.

**5.**

The first time one of them tried to touch her she cursed him with a flick of her finger and the man clutched his burnt and bleeding chest. Leave her alone, he said, amused, from his chair. She’s not for you.

**6.**

Dragon, she said at night, trailing her fingers over his cheeks, one who ignites. Fair Helen’s get, he replied, mine, won fairly. Funny, she said. I thought I won you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday. Misslexilouwho


	24. Just to Sleep

She loved him so much she thought she would die. “I’ll expire,” she’d say as she traced her fingers along the edge of his hip, tracing a line of scars from the war. “As we lie here in the sun on this bed I’ll die. What would you do then.”

“Leave your body and not come back,” he’d say, all practicality. “It’s not like anyone can connect this place to us.”

He’d been married right after it was peaceful again, right after he’d been cleared of all charges. War time atrocities dismissed. Money, influence, power: his family still had them and if their stock had fallen a little because they’d been on the wrong side, well, they’d played both ends against the middle well enough to come out as forgiven. As virtuous.

Not as heroes, not like she was. No one _loved_ them. There were no parades.

“Fuck parades,” he’d said to her. “I’m not in prison.”

Where he was was in government, doing vague and never discussed things. Where he was was with his wife, his beautiful wife. 

She’d get the papers of the society events and trace her fingers over the woman’s cool, unblemished face, over her expensive clothes, over the man at her side, his hand on her arm.

“I didn’t have a choice,” he’d say. “That’s how things work.” And, “We have this.”

Sometimes this wasn’t enough. Was this love, she’d wonder, these stolen afternoons she couldn’t tell anyone about. This carefully planned relationship. No risk. No danger. Was this was it was?

“I’ve had enough of danger,” he’d say. “Haven’t you?” He’d rest his hand on her scars and she’d nod. Sometimes all she wanted to do was lie here, in the sun, and never move again. Lie here with him. Let the rest of the world go.

She’d trace her fingers over the pictures. His wife didn’t have scars. She was younger than they were. Unmarked. Unflawed.

Tea and biscuits and the warm sun. Just to lie there and drift off. Just to be peaceful forever. Just to be with him forever. 

“I could die here, I’m so happy when I’m with you,” she said. “What would you do then?”

“Leave,” he said, amused and sleepy as his eyes began to close, as he began to float away into sleep.

“Not if you died too,” she murmured as she wrapped an arm around him and let herself luxuriate in the sun as it came into their little room, as it made a bright spot on their little bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday, Pixiedust1978


End file.
